Early in the bootcamp, our instructer gave a presentation about the role of confidence and competence throughout this summer journey we would take. He spoke about how our confidence would rise at first, but over time our confidence would dwindle. However, he argued that our competence would grow as our confidence shrunk. The idea seemed perplexing at the time. After all, wouldn't we grow in confidence as our skills developed? Would the analysis of high level programming languages prove to be beneficial in helping us believe we can code? The short answer is uh no!
In reality, my confidence was shook to the core this week. In fact, I doubt I gained any competence at all, though my wife swears I did. Javascript has proven to be difficult to understand and create. HTML and CSS are light and easy to comprehend markup languages. JavaScript, as our first programming language, is far from the ease of access the other two provided. HTML is the blueprint of the page, marking up each section and is useful for displaying text content. CSS is gorgeous, helping to taking plain pages and light them up with graphic design and fun animations. JavaScript, as one bootcamper put it, is "the wizard". It makes the magic happe on screen, and for me this technoligical science is about as understandable right now as magic.
Despite my struggles with javaScript, I did enjoy discovering pseudocode this week. By thinking through the logic of a problem and nalyzing it apart from the nitty gritty syntax of the code, I was able to see my own logical shortcomings. One project this week had us design a simple JavaScript alarm clock. Simple, but vastly complex to a beginner like me. Pseudocoding showed me my own logical shortcomings. Not only do I not know the code, but I was struggling with even thinking through what the code could do and how to make it happen. I have a long way to go in this jounrey, but growth is the goal. And true growth only comes through continued perservation and determination.
Onboarding was unqiue for me. This was my first full week in the bootcamp, and my first full week out of the workplace. Working remote definitely has its challenges. It takes more time and effort to get help with even the smallest tasks, and building relationship and communciation is something that has to be done intentionally. Onboarding helped ease the transition through Slack Huddles as well as help channels of support. The best way for me to overcome these challenges is to continue asking for help and push myself harder into the pseudocode and logic every day. Here's to another week of growth, and hopefully great comprehension of JavaScript!